Concur. This is so obvious to me I do not understand why not posting a price — no matter what it is — is still considered good business practice. Perhaps once upon a time before the internet but no longer.
Which reminds me of a quote from Brian Cantrill: "You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle." -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
I’m not saying it’s a good idea but there are plenty of smart cookies who seem to think it maximises revenue.
If you want to counteract, have a shitty little startup with no funding and ask for the quote for them.
Some businesses think of you from the perspective of partners. Others think of you from the perspective of farmers or ranchers, where they try to pen you in and extract what they want, but understand the necessity of at least some investment on their part. And then there are those who are more like poachers.
This can be price levers on individual features, security track record, non-obvious user patterns that deliver a lot of value, etc. You're given more opportunities to pitch the full value of your product in a way that engages the customer with their particular pain points.
Maybe we should still all use transparent pricing, but I don't think it's fair to say it's used to extract more cash (though some companies definitely do that).